A long line of machines started around 9 a.m. from the Porte de Versailles, where many police officers were deployed to supervise the demonstration which is heading towards the Invalides, in the center.
Around 9:30 a.m., the cumulative traffic jam was 304 kilometers in Ile-de-France, an "exceptional figure for this hour" after a peak at nearly 425 km, according to the Sytadin site.
Trigger of the mobilization: the decision of the government on January 23 to give up authorizing neonicotinoid insecticides for the cultivation of sugar beet, following a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
In recent months, farmers have also gathered in small groups, here to denounce the rise in their production costs due to soaring energy prices, there to demand storage of irrigation water.
Their last big mobilization dated back to November 27, 2019, when a thousand tractors carried out snail operations on the device.
The demonstrators denounced a tightening of the rules concerning the spreading of synthetic pesticides.
"Traffic, very severely disrupted in a large area, from the ring road to the seventh and fifteenth arrondissements of Paris, will be gradually restored" during the day, warned the police headquarters, while Wednesday is also a day of strike at the SNCF.
Grégoire Bouillant, a 40-year-old grain farmer, left his farm in Val-d'Oise around 5 a.m. to arrive at 20 km/h at Porte de Versailles, where the International Trade Fair will be held in less than a month. farming.
He denounces "environmentalist pressure" and "measures that keep stacking up against us".
At the back of his tractor, a sign "Macron liar, yes to NNI (neonicotinoids, editor's note), yes to French sugar".
"We want to show the government that we cannot ban means of production without an alternative", adds Cyril Milard, president of the FDSEA 77.
Parade of tractors in Paris, to protest against the "obligations" imposed on farmers, in particular the ban on certain pesticides, February 8, 2023 © BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
FNSEA and Young Farmers flags and posters "my job respects nature, stop abusive ecologies" flourished on the windows of the tractors and many passers-by took photos along the course of the event.
"Impasses"
Neonicotinoids, toxic to bees and banned since 2018, had benefited from an exemption for two years.
This made it possible to apply them preventively on beet seeds to protect them from jaundice.
"As a user of neonicotinoids, I don't feel like I'm poisoning the world," says grower and union activist Damien Greffin.
He chairs the FNSEA section of the Parisian Grand Bassin which brings together 12 cereal departments in the north of France and is at the initiative of the event, with the union of beet growers CGB, affiliated to the FNSEA.
The National Federation of the majority agricultural union followed suit by calling "to mobilize from February 8 in Paris and until February 20 throughout France".
Farmers march in Paris with their tractors to protest against the "obligations" imposed on them, February 8, 2023 © Bertrand GUAY / AFP
For Damien Greffin, "at this rate agriculture will disappear".
He cites the ban on the insecticide phosmet which "compromises" the cultivation of cherries, or that - soon - of a weed killer for endives.
More broadly, according to the FNSEA, “farmers today find themselves faced with health and regulatory constraints of all kinds which hinder innovative projects in the territories (irrigation, livestock buildings, etc.).
The second representative union, the Rural Coordination, claimed to have proposed to the FNSEA to join the demonstration and was refused.
The Peasant Confederation, the third union which mobilized on Tuesday against the pension reform, deplored that "others" are demonstrating "to continue to use neonicotinoids and refuse any ecological progress".
The environmental NGO Générations Futures recalled on Wednesday that neonicotinoids were "more toxic than the infamous DDT", banned in the 1970s, denouncing practices "worthy of 1960s agriculture, not that of the 2020s".
© 2023 AFP